Coronavirus has accentuated the isolation and alienation that so many of us already felt. The short- and medium-term outlook is bleak. But once the crisis is over, I anticipate an incredible flowering of blocked potentiality and I am eager to see and experience the possibilities of what may come. New forms of life, new ways of relating to one another, new commitments to a joyful and meaningful daily existence, will proliferate across the country and the world.
The exhilaration of coming back together, of non-distanced life, will explode into thousands of new encounters. For a crucial moment, going back to our previous way of life—the drudgery and anxiety of life under late capitalism—will be unthinkable. This will be an incredible opportunity for those of us with alternative visions of life to intervene and propose—nay, demonstrate!—the possibilities for living, organizing, and relating differently.
I have been reading Tom Wolfe’s invigorating book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test chronicling the acid-fueled bus trip that Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters took across the United States in 1964 spreading new forms of life and consciousness across the country and helping kick-start the ‘60s counterculture. Last night, I got pretty stoned for the first time in a while (I’m getting old, give me a break) and watched Across the Universe, which features the Merry Pranksters in a great scene. And I suddenly thought: this is it. This is the intervention—or better, one of many interventions!—to be made in the post-coronavirus moment.
I have so many dear friends scattered across the country. Five years ago, I took a mostly-solo road trip around the US in which I reconnected with old friends and saw their amazing experiments in life and politics, from the “Avant-Gardeners” in Eugene to the rollicking fun of a Halloween weekend in New Orleans. It seems that this should be repeated, but this time in a bus with a collection of friends, comrades, and fellow travelers spreading anarchy and living communism: distributing literature, propaganda, art, music, puppet shows, perhaps even a talk or two based on my research. An autonomous zone in every park, a block party on every street!
Crucially, we would see firsthand and participate in what is happening across the country. Everywhere we go, we would ask the same questions to folks involved in infoshops, communes, alternatives to policing… what are you doing? How is it going? What is working well, what is not? What do you think others could learn from your experience? And then we would spread their answers in other cities through zines and talks and fireside conversations. After so many months communicating digitally, we need to come into contact again.
As the Invisible Committee put it in their ever-relevant book Now: “the thing to do, it would seem, is to leave home, take to the road, go meet up with others, work towards forming connections, whether conflictual, prudent, or joyful, between the different parts of the world. Organizing ourselves has never been anything else than loving each other.”
